If you’re one of the 34% of Americans who make a resolution or set a goal for the new year, and if you’re struggling to stick to what you set out to do on the first of the month, you’re not alone. An estimated 80% of people lose their resolve by mid-February.
We blaze into the new year full of hopes for new opportunities and energy that, let’s be honest, never lasts. We start with the best of intentions but often end up disappointed.
It’s a pattern that belies what I think is an inherent flaw in the idea of resolutions and intention setting at the start of a new year: we begin at the beginning.
What we should be doing instead is beginning with the end in mind.
But here’s where a lot of us start.
We tend to go into the new year thinking about what we want to be different: Lose the holiday weight. Drink less. Exercise more. We think about what we want to fix or what feels broken.
That’s not much of a motivation.
How do you want to end the year? When we reframe the question this way, it’s much more effective than asking how you want to begin it.
This sets us up from the beginning with the acceptance that it’s a long game. Mistakes are not mistakes in a long game. They’re reality and chances for growth. They just are. You will skip days at the gym. You will eat more donuts than you think you should. You will do all the things you think you aren’t supposed to do.
If a football team can lose a seemingly absurd number of games and still make it to the Super Bowl, the individual games don’t matter so much. Stop measuring the beginning failures.
If you’re not constantly assessing why you’re not sticking to the resolution, they become one-and-dones. The second you drop the ball, you’re out of the game. And sure, some sports may work this way. But the good news is life doesn’t work this way — unless you’re dead.
We take life so damn seriously, but it’s one of the few things where we keep getting more and more chances. Admittedly, life has a way of weeding out options as we get older. I can’t do some of the things I could do when I was 20. You’re not likely to start a family at 80. But the game isn’t over. Don’t lose sight of that.
I’ve written in the past about the idea of the long game or what James Carse calls the Infinite vs. the Finite Game. His ideas absolutely apply to the idea of resolutions and goals.
Think of how different a video game is from a basketball game. The latter ends after a certain time but not a video game. You can play Donkey Kong forever. Theoretically, it never ends. Consider this: you don’t necessarily play a video game to score the highest number of points; you play to stay in the game. You make decisions to not lose your pieces, not necessarily decisions to win. It’s a long game.
It’s the difference between winning and playing for the long haul. Don’t play your resolution to win. Play your resolution to stay in the game.
Typically, we think about winning as the ultimate measure of success when staying in the game is truly the best measure of success. Quite often, if you’re the person staying in the game longest, you’re going to end up with the most points.
Do whatever you have to to stay in the game, and try not to get hung up on winning or doing it perfectly or accomplishing the thing in a set timeframe.
And don’t let fear get in the way. Often we don’t play the game or take the chance or say yes to the opportunity because we fear the potential risks. (If you’re playing Donkey Kong and decide not to move anywhere because anywhere risks dying, you are going to die anyway.)
Inaction is not an option if your objective is to stay in the game.
A person who is totally sedentary will die. If your objective is to exercise and get healthy, you can be an ultramarathon runner. Or you can set a goal to be healthy and mobile enough to play with your kids. You can’t do either of those without being in motion.
If you’re sitting still in fear, this is a problem. But if you’re beating yourself up for not running a full marathon, even though you’re still in motion, that’s equally bad. All of those things are worthy of self-appreciation. Give yourself credit for the little wins, the daily choices that keep you in the game. Why? Because in doing so, you are forming better habits. And good habits build upon good actions. (If you really want to build new and better habits, read Atomic Habits by James Clear — great stuff.) But even that magic will fail if you play a game of one-and-done.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that you give yourself permission to do nothing simply because you might go to bed tonight and wake up tomorrow morning still alive. You deserve to hold yourself to a higher level than that. But give yourself permission to let in the options you didn’t see coming.
What you can and should do is give yourself permission to evolve how you engage in the daily, weekly, and monthly things that help you achieve your goals and fulfill your expectations for yourself.
Appreciate the long game (and all the things you’ll learn along the way). And play your resolution to stick with it.
If you can get to the end of the year knowing you’ve honored yourself and your intentions, one way or another, to one degree or another, I promise you’ll feel like a winner. You don’t have to hit a home run to feel like you’ve knocked it out of the park.
Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash
